The term “JPEG” is an acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created the JPEG standard.
JPEG image files are compressed using the JPEG compression scheme. Images captured by digital cameras are often saved as JPEG image files. Additionally, photographic images stored and transmitted on the World Wide Web are often in JPEG format.
JPEG images may additionally be watermarked. Techniques for adding a watermark to a digital image are used for a variety of purposes. For example, the owner of an image may wish to inform any user of the owner's identity for advertising or commercial purposes. Watermarking may also be used as a tool to protect the owner's intellectual property rights in the image. Existing systems and methods used to add a watermark to a JPEG image file typically require the JPEG image file to be decoded, watermarked, and then re-encoded before being provided to a user.